


Ten Bowls of Wine

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-31
Updated: 2004-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herakles and Dionysos engage in a drinking contest.  One of them is bound to regret it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Bowls of Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for unovis

 

 

Listen -

I have a story to tell you.

It's a true story, though not many men have heard it. I know it (and know that it's true) because the father of my father's father was there.

Don't look so doubtful. He was very young at the time, and I am very old now, and we are not so far as that from the Age of Heroes.

This story is about only one hero, but he was the greatest hero who ever lived - yes, Herakles himself. Of course you've heard the tales about his great labors, his great loves and his great losses. A great man, indeed, but though we now invoke his name as though he were a god, he was not. He was a mortal man, and as greatly as his strengths were magnified, so, too, were his foibles.

This is to say that Herakles was something of a lush, and also something of a braggart. He enjoyed his wine and revelry, and the company of his fellows, and the entertainment of beautiful dancing girls (and dancing boys), and he was very proud of how he would still be calling for more to drink when everyone else at the party was face-down in their wine bowls.

One day Herakles was traveling through Phrygia and found himself a guest at the court of Midas, King of the Mygdonians. Midas had won a fair amount of fame for his hospitality, and he took great delight in hosting a guest who could take full advantage of that hospitality. The feasting lasted an entire day and night, and when Midas woke up the next afternoon, he congratulated his guest on his prodigious capacity for wine.

"No one can best me, neither god nor man," Herakles boasted. "I could drink Dionysos himself off his dinner couch."

Midas, who had learned a thing or two in his life about the consequences of arrogance, merely raised an eyebrow and a toast to the hero. "I would give a great deal of my fortune to see you try," he said.

As it happened, Midas knew already that he was likely to get his wish. After the disaster of his golden touch had ended, he had remained on good terms with the god of wine, as all wise men did, and he was still very good friends with his former guest Silenus, Dionysos' own beloved teacher and friend.

And it was through Silenus, that ancient drunkard, that Dionysus heard of Herakles' unwitting challenge. The god laughed with delight, chortled with anticipation, and wasted no time in issuing an invitation to Herakles to attend a party in his honor, where he could prove the worth of his boasts. He counted on Herakles' inability to resist either his pride or his appetites, and he was not disappointed.

Herakles arrived at Dionysos' palace at exactly the appointed time, confident in his finest chiton and the Nemean lion draped around his shoulders. He strode through the entrance hall, surprised that no one was there to greet him. The palace of Dionysos did not have a reputation as a quiet place at any time, and certainly not when the wine god was in residence. But Herakles continued on and entered the great dining room with the same air of gravity he wore for breaking through the gates of Hades or going to the privy in his own house. It took considerably more than a mere Olympian palace to impress strong-armed Herakles.

As he entered he did pause, but it was the emptiness of the hall that startled him rather than its grandeur. All the wine-red couches stood unoccupied, the great amphorae stood untapped, and the slap of Herakles' feet on the floor echoed between the towering columns and the high-raftered ceiling. He skirted the bare space in the middle of the floor, strewn with loose tiles. From the other side, the mess resolved itself in his vision: a half-finished mosaic, a depiction of this same hall in every detail. Only the two central figures remained unfinished, but their outlines made him frown.

"Ho, Dionysos! What game are you playing at?" he called out. He turned in a slow pivot, but nothing stirred in any of the shadows. "Ho!"

"Yes?" came a voice from behind him, cool as mountain water, smooth as Persian silk.

Herakles turned again and there was Dionysos where he hadn't been a moment before. The mouth of the hero went dry for an instant at the sight of him, for although Herakles was not a man easily impressed, Dionysos had drawn wine from harder rocks before.

That night it was a wonder that all present objects, inanimate or otherwise, did not spontaneously gush forth. Neither man nor woman, divine or mortal, could have rivaled the perfect flow of glossy black hair down Dionysos' back, nor the clinging cut of his rich crimson robes, nor especially the depth of his dark, kohl-rimmed eyes which were even at that moment drawing Herakles' breath from his body without his control.

He grunted and looked away. "There you are."

"So it would seem, wouldn't it?" Dionysos stepped forward, his sinuous gait making his garments shimmer and slither around his limbs as though nothing covered him at all. Behind his shoulder, Herakles finally noticed Silenus, who flashed him a snaggle-toothed leer. Only Dionysos could overshadow the loud presence of the satyr. "As for what game I play," Dionysos continued, "it is only the one we both agreed to. A drinking contest, wasn't it?"

"Bowl for bowl until you've have enough," Herakles agreed, and the god laughed as Herakles paced around the circumference of the half-done mosaic. "But what in Hades is this?"

"A commemoration of what is sure to be an occasion for the ages." Dionysos strolled up to join him in looking down at their sketchy likenesses on the floor. "Of course, I'll have the details filled in once we know the course of the evening's events."

Herakles grunted again and folded his arms across his massive chest. "I think we both know what the outcome is going to be."

White teeth flashed between red lips. "I certainly do."

Silenus gave a gurgling howl and flung himself back on one of the couches. "For the love of Zeus, can we start the drinking?" His tangled hair flew out around his head and stuck to the upholstery of the couch, giving him the look of the crowned king of the wild men.

Dionysos laughed again, and the sound sent tingles through the limbs of all who heard it throughout the god's palace, as though they had already drunk a great deal. "A fair question, oldest of friends. Come, Herakles, share my couch and we will drink together."

He took Herakles' hand and drew him to the most ornate couch, then clapped his hands once. As he reclined beside the hero, beautiful girls and boys (including my great grandfather, who as I have said was lovely enough to serve the gods) ran into the hall with bowls and jugs and fine cloths.

"Will you trust me to mix the wine?" Dionysos asked.

Herakles nodded and snarled at the girl who was trying to pull his lion skin from his shoulders. She cringed, a tiny golden slip of a thing, but set her jaw and tugged until she bore the pelt away, staggering under its weight with the tail draped over her face.

"Never have I mixed more than ten bowls, and I prefer only three." The god lifted up two bowls in his long-fingered hands, and Herakles held out his own meaty paws to take one. "Even I know only ten toasts. Shall we have to make up new ones tonight, you and I?"

"I hope you're feeling inventive, wine god." Herakles kept the bowl raised, and Dionysos grinned, wide and feral.

"The first toast, to health! Something we both enjoy, at least - no one has cursed you with a plague lately, have they?"

"No," Herakles replied shortly and drained his bowl in two mighty swallows. "The only plague upon me at the moment is your slow pouring."

Silenus brayed with laughter, spraying wine and spittle across the floor between the couches.

"A second toast, then," Dionysos said, accepting the second bowl from the serving boy and giving a caress in exchange. "To love, which guides our souls, and lust, which guides the rest of us."

"I will drink to the second of those," Herakles declared, and did.

"As you should, and as do I, since it was the lust of our dear father Zeus that brought us both into this world. Where would we be without his unquenchable prick?" Dionysus drank his wine more slowly, savoring the work of his own hands, then took up the third bowl. "And now, the toast to sleep."

"Which we shall see none of tonight!" Herakles declared, and this time he drained the bowl in a single draught.

"No, I think not." Dionysos grinned in such a way that might have alarmed even Herakles, had he been looking. Silenus brayed again. "Now we enter the toasts of the unwise, for more wine than this erodes all the civilized controls of men. Are you sure you wish to go on?"

Herakles felt the warmth of the wine in his stomach and legs; the god mixed it strong indeed. But there was no hesitation in his growl. "Don't stall, Dionysos, unless you fear the wine yourself. We have only come to my favorite toasts."

"Violence, of course." Dionysos lifted the full bowl and began to drink. "And uproar coming next."

"Something we both know well," Herakles said in between gulps. Wine splashed onto his lip and ran into his beard, then trickled down his neck; Dionysos leaned into him and wiped Herakles' throat clean with a slow swipe of his tongue.

"We knew violence in our very cribs," he said against Herakles' collar bone, then leaned back to his place. "Such violent love from our Queen Mother Hera, though no mother of ours is she."

"That royal bitch," Herakles spat, and Dionysos laughed so hard he bent over.

"Oh, happily will I drink to that, my brother," he cried and raised the fifth bowl. "To Hera!"

The sixth bowl came, and Herakles took it, but did not gulp it down as he had the others, for it seemed to be getting stronger with every bowl. "To drunken revels?" he said. "Isn't that your next toast?"

"It is," Dionysos agreed, then looked around as though just noticing the emptiness of the hall around them. "But where are my revelers?"

Silenus shrugged and slumped over on his couch; he had been keeping his own pace.

Dionysos bent backwards, leaning his head back over the edge of the couch until his hair brushed the floor. "Where are my revelers?" he shouted again until there was a noise at the doors and they burst open.

In came the nymphs with their swirling skirts, and in came the satyrs with their clattering feet, and the hall was filled with the sound of drums and flutes and tambourines. Herakles looked down when he felt a wet tongue on his thigh; he did not know whether to be relieved or horrified to see one of Dionysos' pet leopards tasting him with a thoughtful look. It occurred to Herakles then that he had not asked what would happen to him if he lost, impossible though that had seemed.

"Wine god," he said abruptly. "We never spoke of the exact terms of our wager."

Slowly Dionysos turned to him and handed him the next bowl of wine with a smile. "Shouldn't you have thought of that before we began?" he purred. "Though the answer then would have been the same as the answer now - the terms are whatever I wish them to be."

A vision of the Maenads on the hillside, red blood dripping from their mouths, made a vivid splash in Herakles' increasingly fuzzy mind. "And what would you wish them to be?"

"I am feeling generous tonight, due to your excellent company." Dionysos waited until Herakles had sipped his wine, then leaned forward and tasted it from his mouth. "Should you win, unlikely though that seems, I will give you my daughter to marry."

"You had best start preparing the bridal chamber, then," Herakles tried to boast, but it felt as hollow as the lightening space behind his eyes.

Dionysos only laughed again, every laugh growing more merry. "An excellent idea. And if I win - well, I will find some use for it, don't you think?"

"And if you win?" Herakles tried to prompt, but Dionysos only smiled his wicked smile and refilled their bowls.

The next three bowls of wine went by in a haze of music and color, and Herakles forgot what the toasts were as soon as he had drunk to them. But he kept upright, fear stiffening his spine even as the wine and Dionysos' eyes tried to melt it away. He had no wish to be at the mercy of the god of drunken bloodsport, of the mindless ripping frenzy.

But now Dionysos was taking his hands and wrapping them around another bowl. "This is the tenth bowl," the god said softly. "The tenth and last, unless you are even more than a legend. Do you know what the tenth toast is to, Herakles?"

Herakles did not answer, only looked down into the wine, which seemed wide and deep as the ocean.

"The tenth toast is to madness, my friend. Hardly uncharted territory for either of us, I think. Come, let us drink it together and see where the madness leads us tonight."

A hush fell over the hall as the revelers stopped their own drunken antics to watch as the man and the god raised the last bowl to their lips. Herakles' hands trembled, but Dionysos lifted the bowl easily and drank it down in a quick motion. Then he, too, watched as Herakles struggled to swallow the drink that seemed to clog his throat and slide right off his numbed lips.

Dionysos smiled and nodded and held up his own bowl high in the air, upside down to display his triumph as the other bowl fell from Herakles' shaking hands and clattered to the floor. The room tilted and whirled as though it had joined the dance of the nymphs, and then Herakles found himself staring up at the far away ceiling. He thought the couch had broken beneath him, but his senses caught up with him eventually and he knew he had fallen off the couch to the floor.

He looked into the dark eyes of Dionysos and wondered if he had somehow managed to get back onto their couch. But Dionysos was on the floor with him, head bent intimately to Herakles'. "You have forgotten your place, mortal son of our divine father," he whispered, breath hot on Herakles' face. "Though you may be chief among the immortal heroes, you are not yet a god."

Herakles closed his eyes with a groan of sickness and unaccustomed fear. The silk of Dionysos' robes slide against Herakles' bare legs; his lithe form stretched along Herakles' heavy mass and stirred an embarrassing heat in his loins.

"So what now should I do with you, Herakles? Shall we have a procession? Shall I tie you up behind my chariot so that all may see my prize?" Dionysos smelled of flowers and grapes and the sea; his mouth tasted like every wine ever drunk by man. "Should I just give you to the Maenads for their pleasure? Or should I take your forfeit from you in private?"

He opened his eyes again to the blurry form of the god, and wondered which was preferable, humiliation or death or succumbing to the madness in his blood.

* * *

Herakles woke on a bed of pine needles, his lion skin once again wrapped around him. His memory held only small fragments of the night before: ten bowls of wine, ten toasts, burning eyes and laughter that would never leave his ears.

He got slowly to his feet, mindful of his pounding head. His body hurt, pains where he had never known pain before, but he seemed uninjured. Stumbling a little, he made his way down the mountainside, swearing to himself never to touch drink again.

I would like to say that indeed he never did drink again, having learned the hard way to respect the power of the wine god. But as you may have guessed if you have paid any attention to Herakles' nature, his resolution lasted only as long as it took him to reach the nearest town and find a wine shop that would serve him so early in the day.

(I feel we cannot blame him for this. Even a fragmentary memory of Dionysian madness can be hard to banish without help. Trust me; I, too, have served the god in his revels.)

But even that forgetfulness is not always enough, once one has known the mysteries. And with every sip of wine he took, then and for the rest of his life, Herakles understood that he was taking the god once more into himself. Such was his punishment, which no god could undo at any price.

(He never did see the finished mosaic. But I can tell you, it was magnificent.)

 


End file.
